True Christian Religion (Ager) n. 733

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733. The seventh company, which was invisible to the others because of its superior light, was from the eastern quarter of heaven. They were angels of the same society as that to which the angel who had the trumpet belonged. When these heard in heaven that not a single person in the Christian world knew what the joy of heaven and eternal happiness are, they said to each other, "Surely this cannot be true; there cannot be such thick darkness and such mental stupor among Christians; let us go down ourselves also, and hear whether it is true; if it is, it is certainly a wonder." Then these angels said to the angel with the trumpet, "We know that every man who has desired heaven, and has thought at all definitely about the joys there, is introduced after death into these imagined joys; and after such have experienced the nature of these joys and found them to be according to the empty fancies of the mind and their wild imaginings, they are led out of them and instructed. This takes place with most of those in the world of spirits who in the former life had meditated about heaven, and had formed such conclusions about its joys as to desire them." On hearing this the angel with the trumpet said to the six companies called together from the wise of the Christian world, "Follow me, and I will introduce you into your joys, and thus into heaven."


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